I have a Roland BN-20 that receives infrequent use (I know, I know... I've already flogged myself for you; don't worry), but it's constantly on and has the automatic cleaning run 2-3 times per day.

This morning I noticed the BN-20 utility program on my computer prompting me to shake all of the ink cartridges and perform a manual cleaning. I completed all of those tasks, but for some reason the notification did not disappear. I shook the cartridges again and gave the machine another manual cleaning, and the notification was still there. If I click the "X" in the top right corner, it goes away, but then pops up again a few seconds later.

Since I couldn't get the notice to stop popping up, I tried running a test print from VersaWorks to see if I could identify the problem. It came out looking fairly faded with a good bit of smearing/overspray from the magenta.

At this point, I ran a normal cleaning and then did a nozzle check. The black, cyan, yellow, and magenta toward the middle of the page all looked good, but the yellow and magenta nearest to the edge had some issues, and the cyan was just not firing at all.

I then ran a medium cleaning to see if that would help and printed another nozzle check. Some of the cyan nearest to the edge made it onto the vinyl this time, but all of the sudden the colors toward the center were completely messed up.

I did yet another manual cleaning of the machine, followed up by one more normal cleaning for good measure, and printed out a 3rd nozzle check. It came out looking better than the previous one, but still terrible, and now the magenta nearest to the edge only printed out 10 lines, and the yellow next to it didn't work at all.

Here's a picture of all 3 in order (the black smudges are from my fingertips, so please ignore them):

I wanted to see what the test print from VersaWorks would look like now, so I gave it a try, and it came out horribly. Banding all over the place, and tremendously washed out, inconsistent color:

For comparison, this is the print next to one I have from before the printer started giving me problems:

On top of the terrible print quality, the notice from the BN-20 utility program asking me to shake the cartridges and perform a manual cleaning still keeps popping up on my screen.

Does anyone have a guess as to what on earth the problem is? I'm totally lost, so any help or advice will be greatly appreciated.